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Abstract:

The Ranveer Kisan Samiti, a village level peasant organization was formed in October 1994 at the village Belaur in Bhojpur district of Bihar. It was called Ranveer Kisan Mahasangh at the district level. Its guerrilla squad was called Ranveer Sangram Samiti. The Bihar government banned all the three organizations and gave the name Ranveer Sena. One view is that the Ranveer Kisan Samiti was formed in self-defence in the wake of the armed attacks by the guerrilla squads of the CPI (ML) when a section of peasants resisted the demand of labour wage hike as they were not in a position to pay higher wages. The peasants were not permitted to cultivate their lands as there used to be nakebandi of the village by units of the CPI (ML) Liberation. It was then decided to form an organized resistance to such kinds of nakebandi. Both the Ranveer Sena and the CPI (ML) Liberation operated primarily in the paddy cultivated region where the average landholding per family was relatively meagre. In other regions of Bihar, where the concentration of landholdings was relatively large, there was neither the existence of Sena nor of the Liberation. It is a known fact that market economy has destroyed the peasant holdings and their rural settings over the decades in an irreversible way. The pressure of the market economy and of the Liberation cadres for land reforms and higher wages compelled the Sena to resist this Liberation’s demand which they felt was unjustified. The movement was the consequence of it. It was a unique, alternative, spontaneous, peasant movement against the CPI (ML) Liberation.

Speaker:

Dr. Himanshu Roy is currently Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. He has taught Political Science in Delhi University for 26 years. His area of research and work is Indian politics and Indian political thought. He has published 25 research papers and 10 chapters in edited books. His publications include: Indian Political Thought (Ed.), 2012, Secularism and its Colonial Legacy, 2009, Indian Political System (Ed.), 2005, Peasant in Marxism, 2007. Dr. Roy has also worked on a project on Salwa Judum under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. His paper Salwa Judum: Another view has been published by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in the Occasional Papers Series in 2014.